When the Time Comes Around (turn, turn, turn)

I asked for Non-Addergoole Prompts here; this is to rix_scaedu‘s prompt mashed up with ankewehner‘s

Stranded World has a landing page here.

🕯️

It was the season for candles. Autumn settled in her van/RV, approximately eight thousand miles from anyone she knew, and lit a candle on her table.

Just one candle, and hers was red. This was how this thing was done. She sat down on her beanbag, and studied the flame.

🕯️

It was the time for the flame. Winter excused himself from the quiet social obligations of the party to set a glass candleholder in the North-facing window.

He pulled up a chair in front of the window, and settled in before lighting the candle. Just one, and his was white. There was an order to this, as in all things.

🕯️

It was just about that time. Spring kissed New Boy deeply, did something somewhat obscene to Slightly Less New Boy, and left the two of them to entertain each other or complain about video games.

She dug the candle – spring green – out of her underwear drawer and stuck it in a metal can in her East-facing window. There was a way to do things, but she was the tangler, so she added two birthday candles for contrast.

She lit all three and stared into the flame.

🕯️

Everything happened when it had to, and in its own time. This just happened to be the right time to light a candle.

Summer was alone, tonight; she had arranged it that way. She lit the orange-yellow pillar candle and set it, carefully, on the plate from home. Things went the way they needed to, and this way needed one light, and no more.

Summer stared into the flame and thought of home.

Icons all by the wonderful djinni

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/858731.html. You can comment here or there.

Evening in the Sunset

Oct10

They had a yard.

Summer had grown up with a yard, of course, the rolling acres of the RoundTree estate, and Melinda had grown up in the ‘burbs – but Bishop had spent his whole life in apartments and high-rises.

Now, with the giant house they were renting (they’d gotten lucky, but, as Melinda pointed out, they usually got lucky when they really needed to. Summer was their good luck charm, and she was totally fine with that), they had space, they had a kitchen, and they had a back yard.

“You’re sure the landlord’s okay with a fire pit?” Bishop moved the cement pavers around one more time. “Right here look good to you?”

“I think it ought to all be one inch to the left,” Melinda teased. “Bishie, it’s fine.”

“It’s more than fine. It’s beautiful.” Summer grabbed one side of the metal pit while Melinda grabbed the other. “Just like you, Bishie.”

“I’m not entirely certain I approve of that nickname.”

“Too bad.” Melinda’s smile was the sort of brilliant warmth that always distracted Summer; whilst carrying a large metal bucket, however, was not the time to be distracted. She focused on the firepit. “And Mrs. Scrooge said it was fine. Pretty much, anything that doesn’t hurt the property is fine – including thought-out improvements – as long as our rent arrives on the first of every month before noon.”

“That specific?” Bishop belatedly hurried over, only to realize that there really wasn’t an easy way for three people to carry a round object. “Are you – do you-”

“We’re not delicate flowers, Bish.” The lilies in Melinda’s hair didn’t so much belie her assertion as highlight it. “Just spot us so we get this centered in your lovely stone circle?”

Summer could no more help the grin growing on her face than she could help the rainfall or the sun shining – less, since she knew charms for both of those. There was something about Melinda, something – fiery. “I love you.”

Sometimes, she still felt a moment of panic when she said things like that. You weren’t supposed to love the girl. You weren’t supposed to say it. She’d gotten burned before.

But Mellie just grinned back. “I know.” She made kissy faces across the firepit. “Let’s put this thing down so I can remind you exactly how much.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” It was an easy carry – it was an empty large metal bucket, it wasn’t all that heavy – and a slightly more complicated getting-it-centered dance, Bishop trying to steer and mostly failing.

And then they had all wiped their hands on their jeans – or each other’s jeans or the grass, or all three – Summer found herself being grabbed into a kiss.

She drew a luck charm in the air behind Mellie’s back, just a little boost, not that they needed it, and gave in to the kiss, a long thing, with tongue and just the right amount of nose-rubbing. Mellie had a bubble butt, as fun to squeeze as it was to watch from behind.

Bishop draped an arm around each of their shoulders, and Summer opened her eyes, realizing only then that she’d closed them. “We have a yard.” The sun was setting red and fiery behind her lovers, and they had a yard. “All is right with the world.”

This fills the “Evening” square on my ladiesbingo card and was prompted by eseme. It is set in Stranded World setting, and Bishop, Mellie, and Summer have been featured in several stories already.

556 words by http://www.wordcounter.net/

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/827753.html. You can comment here or there.

Seeking Roommate, a ficlet of Stranded World

Sep23

Written to alexseanchai‘s prompt to my mini-prompt-call on Gender-Funkiness & also serving as an Iconflash for this icon!

“…and this is Add. She? He?” Bishop turned to the person standing next to him, seemingly oblivious to Summer’s embarrassed cringe. You couldn’t just… could you?

Add, who had black eyeliner, black hair, a black lace shirt, and black combat pants, looked thoughtful about the matter, hand on chin. “It’s a full moon, isn’t it?” Add glanced out the window at the sun. “Let’s go with they.”

“Right. They’re looking for a place to stay for the year, and, well, since we’re looking for another roommate or two…”

Summer studied Add. Add, in turn, studied Summer. They had perfect eyebrows, black lipstick, and a sardonic smile that said goth to Summer. “The pronouns aren’t going to be an issue, are they?”

Summer raised her own eyebrows right back. “Pronouns? Bishop hasn’t told you anything at all about us, has he? No. The pronouns aren’t going to be a problem.” She borrowed a smile from Basil, the “you poor dear” one. “We’re theater people, come on. We read Shakespeare.”

“Summm…” Bishop sighed. Summer cringed inwardly. She hadn’t meant to get her hackles up, but it was showing, wasn’t it? She peeked at Add.

Add was… grinning. Well, that was probably good. They really needed to fill that room. “I like her.”

Summer relaxed.

“I like her a lot.“

“Not too much, please,” Bishop teased.

Summer had to agree: “the bed’s full enough already.”

Summer & Bishop, along with their girlfriend Melinda, are characters in Stranded World. Their relationship started with this story. Basil is Summer’s theatre friend, who shows up quite frequently.

I am on a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons djinni has drawn for me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/813828.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Order

Sep12

“You’re totally OCD, you know.”

Winter’s new co-worker sprawled on the edge of Winter’s desk, poking at the pens Winter had lined up parallel to the edge of said desk. “I can see why you work in a law library.”

“I like order.” Winter moved the pens back into line and allowed himself to look the new co-worker in the scruffy face. “It helps with my work, yes.” He noticed the twitch above the man’s left eye, and the nick where he’d likely cut himself shaving. “And why are you working in a law library, Darrel?”

Useful setting information: The strands, in this ‘verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons Djinni has drawn for me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/810315.html. You can comment here or there.

Friday Flash/Djinni Icon Flash: Like This and Like That

Sep4

“This is the dance.” Senna took Autumn’s hands. “Your feet go like…” She hitched up her skirts to show her bare toes. “This and then this and then this.”

“Like, ah…” Autumn tried the steps. “This and then this, and then this and this?”

“Almost!” Senna grinned and showed off the steps again. “This and then this and so on.”

“This and then this…” Autumn found herself singing it. “Then this and so on. Senna, you’re a genius.”

“I’m a genius? It’s a dance.” The dance-mistress’ feet moved in a more complicated pattern this time, and her skirts swished against her knees.

“You’re a genius. It’s a song.” More than a song, it was a knot. “It’s a song to the universe.”

Autumn shifted her vision sideways, to the place where the strands of the world lay bright against the void. “‘Like this and like that and like this and uh…'” Her steps twined in the strands; Senna’s steps twisted in the lines, and together they made a beautiful macrame of connections. “Genius. This is the dance.”

Useful setting information: The strands, in this ‘verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written for Friday Flash and in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons Djinni has drawn for me.

“Like this and like that and like this and uh…” is from Dr. Dre’s Nuthin but a G thang.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802433.html. You can comment here or there.

Untangling Knots, a continuation of Stranded World for @Anke

Mar27

This is a continuation of Tangles and Knots commissioned by anke.

It is part of my Stranded World series.

There was a knot sitting on the skein of reality, a heavy knot with complex weaving that spoke of intentional tying and tangling. Winter walked away from the camp of trailers and RV’s, walked to the small town’s corner store, and passed his suit jacket to the old man sitting at the picnic table there.

“That’s a nice coat.”

“Custom tailored. But I don’t need it where I’m going. I need something less obvious.”

The old man’s bleary eyes turned sharp for a moment. “Son, you’re going to have to change more than the coat for that.”

Winter undid his tie and added it to the sportcoat, then pulled the elastic out of his ponytail. He unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt and untucked it, so that it hung sloppily over his belt, then ran his hands through his hair until it was no longer tidy.

The old man nodded slowly. “It’s a start, at least.”

Winter nodded. “And a jacket?”

“You wanna borrow mine?”

“Consider the suit coat collateral.”

The old man nodded slowly, and slid out of the old denim-and-flannel, with its even older veteran patches and the three bike sigils. “You run into someone from the old gang…”

“I understand. I won’t claim those false pretenses.” Winter coughed. “That is, I ain’t gonna pretend to be something I’m not.”

The man squinted. “You do that better than you ought. And with your white hair, might ought to be older than you look.”

“Younger, usually. But I thank you. I should be back within the hour.”

Thus armed, Winter bought a 40-oz bottle of beer and tucked it, wrapped in its paper bag, loosely into a pocket. He scuffed his perfect shoes in the mud and carefully removed, as Spring would say, the poker from his ass.

He shuffled into the edge of the trailer camp, his head down and his shoulders hunched. The lines of the strands were twisted here, the rope-work turning into a complicated macramé pattern.

“Hey! What are you doing about here?” Not the Tattered-coat one, at least, probably not. This was a woman, with dishwater-hair and a jaw that spoke of poor dental work, blue jeans and three flannel shirts.

Winter raised his head slowly to her. “Looking for…” He blinked, blearily. There were panhandlers on the street, on the way to his office, back in the clean city where he lived (so far from Autumn’s raucous world). He imitated the oldest of those on a bad day. “Looking for… someone.”

“Well, you ain’t gonna find them around here. Get on with you. Go.”

Winter shuffled forward, took a messy swig from his bottle, and moved closer. “Looking,” he insisted. The strands knotted and twisted around her.

“And they. Ain’t. Here.” She reached out towards Winter.

He grabbed as if reaching for her hand, “missed,” and stroked his hand through her strands. The knots were tight, but he was the one who smoothed chaos lines straight. “Looking for you. Looking for Tattercoats.”

She froze at the name, then shuddered as he found and untied a knot. “Tattercoats isn’t…. isn’t…” She slumped to the ground.

Winter caught her on the way down and set her, carefully, on the stairs. “My apologies.” He had the scent now, though, in the knot he’d unhooked from her agency. “Sleep calmly.”

Winter himself was… not calm. He grabbed the strand he’d untied from the woman, and pulled.

He would be meeting this Tattercoats. Very soon.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/697268.html. You can comment here or there.

The Language of the Strands

Mar24

To kelkyag‘s prompt to my other bingo call.

This fills the square “The Three Languages,” and is from the Stranded World, from the seasonal siblings’ mother Eugenia. The Stranded landing page is here.

The Three Languages: talking about Strands

“They say a child found the strands.” Eugenia had gathered her children for storytime.

She cleared her throat. “A child who had no skill. So her father sent her out to the woods to learn a language.

“She came back the next night. ‘I know how to speak to the wildness,’ she told her dad.” Eugenia always did the voices. “‘Bah,’ he said, ‘try again.'”

“She came back the next night, again. ‘I know how to speak the calm order.’ And ‘Bah,’ he said, ‘try again.'”

“And the third night. ‘I know how to speak to kinship.’ And that was that for her dad. ‘Out,’ he bellowed.

“And out she went. But she had learned the language of the Strands, and she did not return.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/696176.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Day 12: Stranded

Feb14

PirateKitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twelfth question comes from clare_dragonfly and is for Stranded World

Was there a first person to discover the strands?

From an earlier question this month:

There are those who believe that, at one time, all humans had this power, but most of them are poo-pooed; studies show that almost every case of a known Strand-Weavers can be traced genealogically to a handful of magically inclined people in approx. 450 AD.

The literature here disagrees, and there is quite a bit of literature.

Not out on the public shelves of the library or your local Barnes & Noble, of course, but if you know where you’re looking, there’s information to be found – texts and treatises and long boring papers and short graphic novels. The Strands tend to attract those of a curious and artistic bent, and that leads to a great deal being written about them.

If you look back at the earliest known material – in the era of the end of the Roman Empire – you are more searching for clues than reading information; many of the books of that era are believed to have been burned in purges through the centuries.

There is a tapestry in a museum in London which shows a woman plucking multi-colored strings out of the clouds; rain falls onto parched crops where she plucks. It’s been dated to approximately the seventh century AD.

Deep in catacombs under Austria, there have been clay tablets found describing the way that threads could be used to bind people together, or to unbind them if the binding was unwanted. They are assumed to be from about 800 AD.

And so on. Common theories suggest that one person found the Strands and taught their friends about them, or that several people in different places around the globe found out about them at about the same time.

When the proper sort of anthropologist has been sent in to newly-discovered isolated communities, in almost all cases the people there have demonstrated neither the ability to manipulate or see the Strands of the knowledge thereof.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/667572.html. You can comment here or there.

Tangles and Knots

Feb12

This is to kelkyag‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It takes part in my Stranded World setting, after all extant Tattercoat stories.

Names from <a href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg
“>Seventh Sanctum.

There was something amiss with Winter’s sister.

With the oldest of Winter’s sisters and the most steady, the most easy-going, the least likely to have things go amiss.

Spring had warned him first, in that way that she did, a riddle tied up in a knot, the sonnets are slanting sideways and the seeds are falling all wrong. Then Summer, just something’s wrong with Autumn.

When their mother had called Winter, do something, he had known things had gotten out of hand. But because it was not he who had seen the problem first but Spring, he went out of character for himself and did things indirectly, looking not for the tangle but for its cause.

He had been young and cocky when he’d taught Spring; it hadn’t occurred to him until much later how much she had taught him.

There were tangles in Autumn’s skein, that much was clear. Knots, and, worse, fraying and snipped ends. But why? She’d always been so ready to flow with the world’s streams, so quick to twine with others and so very slow to actually tie any lasting connections.

Winter spied. He followed lines back from his sister without ever letting her see his presence, he murmured questions at the right people, he followed paperwork trails where they existed. He studied.

When he had a path to walk, he began walking. Literally, in this case: the cause of the snarls was only a few miles away, just a short trip from the Ren Faire where Autumn had set up shop.

Did she know? From the way her lines tangled, Winter doubted it. There was loss and pain in her mess, not immediate intimacy.

Winter made it to the house, or at least the dwelling – three trailers and an old recreational vehicle set up in a square around a loose courtyard, plenty for the mild spring weather – before something stopped him in his tracks.

His sisters and mother had said one word, and, while others had used other names, they had all led back to the same person. Tattercoat.

There were seven people in the compound, and a complex of tangled Strands and intentional knots that spoke of intentional weaving.

Untangling Knots

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665445.html. You can comment here or there.

Stranded in Winter

Feb10

This is to moonwolf‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call, with a side order of librarygeek‘s prompt here

Warning: cliffhanger.

Autumn (and Winter, et al) are from Stranded World.

Winter – the season, not her brother – left Autumn stuck in one place, this year not just in a single town, the way she often spent the colder times, but stuck in the town’s tiny inn, the snow actually pressing the doors shut.

She’d spent the first day sitting in the tavern down stairs, drawing, playing online when the spotty wi-fi was working, and working on her very messy accounting. The second day she’d spent half hiding in her room, and the other half helping the also-stuck cook-and-owner clean the kitchen top to bottom. The third day, when it was clear that the snow really wasn’t going to let up, they’d both crawled out a second-story window, jumped off the porch, and started shoveling their way down to the ground.

When they’d gotten the door clear and most of the inn’s sidewalk, and after they’d taken a break for cider and cheese, they dug across the street to the Library. The Librarian, eighty years old if she was a day, had been subsisting on biscuits and tea. She was so grateful for the rescue that she let Autumn check out whatever she wanted, on the theory that it wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.

The inn-cook, no older than Autumn, had said, over and over again, that this was the worst winter he could remember. When the Librarian said it, too, it pricked Autumn’s curiosity.

She read ancient newspapers while munching on onions rings and chicken wings, helped the inn-cook shovel to the grocery and then to the grocer’s house, read until she fell asleep, and read over breakfast. When she and the inn-cook had re-cleared paths that had gotten a foot of snow overnight, she headed up to the highest place she could reach – the Library’s cupola – and started looking. Looking.

She drew the patterns she wanted on her arms: the weather, which was generally mild, with inches, not feet, falling at once. The people, who were generally stoic and tended not to leave town much (except Autumn, and others like her, who came and went with the seasons). The anomaly, snow past her hips and still falling.

And when she was done, her arms and chest bare to the frigid air and covered in snowflake patterns, she opened her sight to the Strands.

And fell down, nearly blinded. “Oh.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663858.html. You can comment here or there.

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